Tennessee legislators have introduced a slate of bills granting licenses to discriminate. Among them are two bills that would allow faith-based child placement agencies to refuse to provide services to certain people due to religious or moral beliefs. While often used to ban LGBT individuals and couples from providing loving homes, these […]
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Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, a Catholic LGBTQ advocacy organization, said that while Catholic school policies vary throughout the U.S., St. Ann is not an outlier in rejecting students with same-sex parents. Some schools welcome children with same-sex parents, some schools don’t and others have more nuanced policies, according to […]
“It is never a good situation for the employee who was terminated in these types of situations,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke of Dignity USA, the largest LGBTQ Catholic advocacy group in the world. “I don’t know of a single situation in which the institution has acknowledged their wrongdoing, but things were […]
The just-concluded Vatican summit on sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy yielded astoundingly little substantive change in how the world’s largest Christian denomination will hold itself accountable for past sins or ensure the safety of minors around the globe moving forward. However, there were some statements that emerged from […]
In late January, we walked around Panama City streets jammed with young Catholics while wearing rainbow sashes and buttons, and carrying a sign that read “Faithful Catholics committed to full equality for LGBTQI persons.” We were a delegation from Equally Blessed, a coalition of three organizations committed to LGBTQI justice […]
On Wednesday, February 27, at 8:30 PM ET, Equally Blessed will offer a free webinar, open to the public, for supporters and other interested people to hear from the Equally Blessed pilgrims who traveled to World Youth Day in Panama from January 21-27, 2019. The pilgrims, ages 23 through 33, […]
All my life, the only thing I ever wanted to do is work for the church. And for eight years, I did. Working in youth ministry, I eventually became the director of religious education for a low-income parish in Indianapolis primarily serving a Latino immigrant community. I thought I would […]
A 31-year-old, gay Washington man and federal employee just returned from Panama City, Panama where he attended the 16th annual World Youth Day Jan. 22-27. The Roman Catholic Church-sponsored gathering, started by Pope John Paul II in 1985, is held every two-three years at various international locales. Keith Hall, a […]
DignityUSA, a group that works to gain respect for LGBTQ people in the Catholic Church, has stood up for Bianco in the wake of his resignation. Executive director Marianne Duddy-Burke saw his case as “a predictable albeit extreme response to the Catholic hierarchy’s dehumanizing teachings about gay people.” “There should […]
When Antonio Aaron Bianco arrived for work at his Roman Catholic church office on a recent Monday morning, he was rattled to discover that someone had broken into the conference room and spray-painted a message in large yellow letters on the wall. It said “No Fags.” For Mr. Bianco, a […]